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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!rutgers!mit-eddie!mit-hermes!phr
From: phr@mit-hermes.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Look and feel problem?
Message-ID: <2802@mit-hermes.AI.MIT.EDU>
Date: Mon, 16-Feb-87 23:54:12 EST
Article-I.D.: mit-herm.2802
Posted: Mon Feb 16 23:54:12 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 17-Feb-87 18:48:57 EST
References: <17300@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <242@mcdsun.UUCP> <341@unirot.UUCP>
Reply-To: phr@hermes.UUCP (Paul Rubin)
Organization: The MIT AI Lab, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 25

In article <341@unirot.UUCP> ron@unirot.UUCP (Ron Natalie) writes:
>AT&T decided to let everyone use the set-UID bit without bothering
>them back around 1981.  Mostly it is patented because there was a
>big drive to increase the number of patents that Bell Labs employees
>held for statistical reasons.

Sadly, this doesn't seem to be true.  RMS spoke with an AT&T lawyer a
few days ago, and the lawyer said AT&T never had any such policy.
They let Idris and maybe a few others use SUID without the hassle of
negotiating a royalty agreement that pre-breakup AT&T might not have
been able to collect anything from anyway, but future would-be SUID
users have to make their own arrangements.  AT&T is cooperating with
the IEEE POSIX committee, so I don't think other "look and feel" issues
will cause trouble for Unix imitations.

Related: Dan Bricklin (author of Visi-Calc) is helping the Lotus
suit defendants by collecting a list of other software and hardware
lookalikes (e.g. "Hayes compatible" modems, etc.) to present at
the trial.  If you know of some, please send them to
   send-in-the-clones@prep.ai.mit.edu (internet) or
   mit-eddie!mit-prep!send-in-the-clones (uucp)
and we will pass them on.  (Please don't send them directly to me and
don't post them here).  A longer message about this is going on some
other newsgroups but I decided it was not Minix-related enough to post
the whole thing here.